Safed Rabbis urge Jews to refrain from renting apartments to Arabs

[azurnoir]

A group of 18 prominent rabbis, including the chief rabbi of Safed, signed a call urging Jews to refrain from renting or selling apartments to non-Jews.

<snip>

Safed chief rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, who has been criticized in the past for incendiary remarks against Arabs, is the most prominent figure to sign the letter.

Mahmoud Abu Salah, the Arab representative of the Academic College Student Union, told Haaretz that his primary task is to aid Arab students in finding apartments to rent.

"The entire population in Safed listens to Rabbi Eliyahu, not just the religious public," he said. "Sometimes I present myself as 'Tomer.' That is the only way people will agree to rent out their apartments. In one instance, we managed to find an apartment for rent in the nearby moshav of Biriya. When the neighbors understood that Arabs were moving in, they threatened to set the apartment on fire. The situation has become intolerable. There are students who come here from the Negev, the Triangle, Haifa and Wadi Ara. They have nowhere to live. We will combat this ugly phenomenon."

"You can say the word 'racist' 20 times," Eliyahu once told an interviewer. "It doesn't have an effect on me. By the way, Jewish religious law prohibits the selling of apartments to Arabs and the renting of apartments to Arabs." *

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/safed-rabbis-urge-jews-to-refrain-from-renting-apartments-to-arabs-1.320118


_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

* this was news to me

[azurnoir]

1. an interesting piece on the law called lo tehonem

http://www.emanuelsf.org/downloads/education/Land_For_Peace_Responsa.pdf

[Mosby]

3. Rabbi Yosef is cited in the first responsa

Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, has emphasized that pikuah
nefesh , the saving of human life, takes precedence over all the commandments in the
Torah except for idol worship, forbidden sexual relationships and murder ( Sanhedrin 74a).
Thus, even if it were a mitzvah to keep the territories under Jewish sovereignty, pikuah
nefesh would take precedence.

As Rabbi Yosef states:
Therefore, if the military commanders along with the members of the cabinet decide that
it is an issue of pikuah nefesh . . . that if territories are returned, the threat of war shall be
decreased and there is the possibility of lasting peace, it appears that according to all
halakhic opinions it is permissible to return territories of Eretz Yisrael for the sake of
attaining this goal, for nothing stands in the way of pikuah nefesh . 12

Found on page 3.

[azurnoir]

4. IMO "if" is the operative word in his statement and

pikuah nefesh refers more to the saving of an individual life

[aquart]

2. They hate each other. Really.